As of this past weekend, Joss Whedon’s Avengers spin-off television show has officially been greenlit. Airing on ABC, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will follow Agent Phil Coulson and a small, select group of other agents in the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.

Here’s a breakdown of the characters, based on the show’s official synopsis:

• Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) – needs no introduction #coulsonlives
• Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) – highly trained in combat and espionage
• Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) – expert pilot and martial artist
• Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) – brilliant engineer
• Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) – genius bio-chemist
• Skye (Chloe Bennet) – new recruit and computer hacker

Sounds like a crack team! Together they’ll be “investigating the new, the strange, and the unknown across the globe, protecting the ordinary from the extraordinary.”

… is it just me or does this sound an awful lot like Torchwood? Not that that show had the monopoly on this premise either, but that was also my first thought when I saw the promo picture above.  (My second thought was – who are those dark-haired teen models hanging out with Phil and Ming-Na?) But hey, this has got to be better than the Americanized Torchwood that aired on STARZ.

So what do you think? Will you watch? Got any theories about how #coulsonlives after all? (My complete speculation: Nick Fury can be a manipulative jerk sometimes.)